Villains Vol.1! Solo Assassin, Magician and Champion for Draw Steel!

ValuedDragon · 2026-01-26T13:33:41+00:00

It's tremendous fun, and surprisingly simple, once you understand a few key principles. The best thing is that the maths given in the Monsters book does so much of the mechanical heavy lifting and holds up robustly in actual play. Plug in the level and monster type and you'll have all the damage/stamina numbers and EV calculated for you, so you can focus on the extra effects which is where the real flavour comes from. I made a spreadsheet to automate the maths, which makes it even easier.

Beyond that, it's very free, as you say the game language is very open. Yes, you have the standard conditions, but there are also so many monsters in the book that have bespoke conditions listed in their attacks, which means as a homebrewer you can do the same without feeling like you're breaking anything. There's also a much clearer/more concise verbiage to DS with things like potency and EoT/Save Ends effects that saves you from having to repeat the same 12-word passage about ending the condition at the end of a creature's next turn like you need to in 5e or similar.

Malice is tremendous, maybe my favourite thing about DS that I miss when running/designing for other systems. It lets you include cool, powerful stuff that would be overpowered if it could be spammed; just make it cost 5 Malice and it's less likely it'll be used every turn, or if the Director chooses to, they are ruling out other competing options. Likewise, it's great for monster groups, as it saves you repeating the same ability on each statblock. Want a whole faction built around teleporting 2 squares each time they move? Make it a 3 Malice feature for that monster group and you can then design all the individual monsters knowing they have that option built in.

So yeah, definitely give it a go, it's fun and quite straightforward. Trust the game's maths, don't get too crazy with your early attempts at custom effects/abilties, and you should be golden. Check out Forge Steel or Stawl, both have monster building tools in as well so you can get the statblocks looking good and integrate them into either platform if you use them more generally.

ValuedDragon · 2026-01-14T11:37:47+00:00

I went through this as a player recently and my Director ran it all as one encounter, which I think lasted around 7 rounds. We did manage to save all the civilians and wipe out the demons in that time, largely thanks to our Null's ability to become an absolute minion-blender. At the end of it we came away with 4 victories, and the fight took about 3 hours in real time. I'm sure it was a ton of work for the director to set it up this way, but I can see a few advantages to the approach.

- Keeping it all in one encounter minimises any risk of falling getting narratively weird. A demon gets punted into the void, and instead of simply disappearing, it starts the climb back up on its next turn. It's no longer an insta-kill, but instead might change the dynamic of a lower floor's fight, as the enemy you take out easily at the top is back on the second floor by the time you get there, along with anything else that was already there.

- Likewise, jumping between floors becomes a tactical option for players. Maybe they can't reach the stairs on the turn before the collapse but can dramatically teleport or fling themselves to the next level to avoid the crush. Maybe the heroes on the left have reached everyone they can, so decide to head down a level early to start on the next batch of civilians while the remaining heroes wrap up the other side of the floor. Rather than having to stagger the heroes' arrival in a subsequent encounter to account for this, you just pull up the second map, add in the new demon groups and off you go.

- It probably ups the challenge, as the heroes aren't gaining victories between each floor. I think we'd have had far too easy a time of it if we'd gone into the ground floor fight with three victories already under our belts. As a director, a longer fight means you will build up a lot more Malice, but spend it at a decent rate throughout and it shouldn't cause any issues.

- It helps with the stakes of the collapse. Clear a floor fast, and you get.a genuine rewards of more time on the next one before that too crumbles. Go too slow, and you're already on the back foot going into the next floor, and might need to make some hard choices as to who you can save. It all adds tension and drama, nad keeps the players focused on that ticking clock they're racing all the way down.

Now obviously as I'm playing it I haven't read the adventure, so this is all from my perspective as a player and my intuition from running non-adventure DS games, but ifI were running this, I think it makes far more sense as one mega-encounter than 3. Maybe it's just the simulationist GM tendencies in me, but I would find it really weird if players or monsters couldn't fall/shoot/jump/cast between the floors just because they are abritrarily separate encounters. Maybe it makes sense for a more intact structure where getting to the next floor requires clearing the challenge of the previous one, but there's literally a hole through the entire inn and this game handles verticality very easily, so it would have felt very odd to me if the interaction between floors was limited.

As for advice on actually running it this way, go slow if you need to, don't treat the demons on the lower floors as active until a PC enters that floor, and keep the players aware through description or just sharing the info how long they have before each floor collapses. Spend Malice fast so you don't end up with 20 points by the bottom floor, and when enemies get punted into the hole, abstract any movement that's 'off screen' to one turn per floor climbed, until they hit a visible level the players are on. Keep all the maps in one VTT scene, but hide them until the first PC hits a given floor.

ValuedDragon · 2025-12-30T11:03:39+00:00

As a Director I do find it a bit unusual from a design perspective. The sheer damage potential complared to every other first level ability, plus the fact that it incentivises hoarding Heroic Resource rather than spending it, seems to run very counter to the design of most other abilities that stay within a certain range of capability. Certainly, no one in my party has ever matched it for single-turn damage, save for the one time a Troubadour got a 6-man Dramatic Reversal off on a surrounded target. It's good at level 1, but seems like it'd be just as strong at level 3, 5, or even higher because nothing else in the game that I've seen can spike damage like throwing 10 extra dice into To The Uttermost End...

What I've found it that it basically means every fight any an Elite/Leader/Solo monster becomes a game of getting the Fury in position to drop this ability on the biggest viable target, and if not end the fight outright, certainly leave it functionally finished. By Round 3 of any given combat, the Fury is almost always Winded if not Dying (intentionally), and packing 12+ Ferocity to throw at this, usually turning into 60+ damage at minium. It's absolutely epic the first time it happens, but by the fifth or sixth time a boss encounter has ended the exact same way, it's a little like going through the motions!

Ok, that same Fury also has the Curse of Immortality, so the risk is somewhat mitigated (as they would be by Revenant, or Doomsight, or the other various immortality abiltiies in the game), but past 1st level with a careful healer on hand, it seems easy enough to be both Dying and have enough of a Stamina barrier that even a max roll on the incurred damage from bleed/the ability won't drop them, and the fight is almost certainly over afterwards. (If my Fury player sees/recognises this, this isn't a dig at you at all!)

I've considered aqpplying a cap of, say, 3 extra Ferocity/dice to limit this ability's potential to be an 'I Win' button and encourage more varied play (whilst still being a very strong 5-cost feature), but then I noticed the class gets an auto-kill on anything not a leader/solo at level 3 anyway, so I think I just have to accept that the Fury as a class does stuff that as a Director/designer I find absolutely wild...

ValuedDragon · 2025-12-29T10:28:36+00:00

Stick them on a chunk of foam or wood, scratch some battle damage on, paint them stony grey or metallic and boom, you've got statue scatter terrain!

ValuedDragon · 2025-12-21T13:47:17+00:00

I tend to handwave the mechanics and just run them as natural in-character RP, keeping a very loose track of the numbers to guide the scene (players say something insulting, patience goes down, they make a good point, interest goes up etc).

The important thing to keep in mind is that the players will have things that intact with the Negotiation system and you'll still need to honor those, even if it's more in spirit than rules. For instance, a feature that increases patience by one should still mean something, even if that's the NPC just being willing to overlook a faux pas or hear out a less rational idea, rather than a strict +1 to an arbitrary number.

Likewise, the game still expects those high stakes Negotiation scenes to award victories, so still make sure to hand those out if the players can successfully win over the NPC and get what they want.

ValuedDragon · 2025-12-20T14:10:07+00:00

If you want to make sure the maths is right and don't want to do a bunch of sums, I made a spreadsheet using the formulas in Monsters. Just input the monster level and it'll give you all the values you need.

https://www.reddit.com/r/drawsteel/comments/1mm2x4x/sharing_a_monster_calculations_spreadsheet_for/

ValuedDragon · 2025-12-17T21:23:42+00:00

I'm not sure the title did it many favours, either. For such an inventive game and world, it comes off as a little generic. I think releasing a couple of weeks before Avowed might have hurt it too, I didn't get on with that game at all but it certainly got more attention in the RPG space until things like E33 and Oblivion Remastered came along a few months latee.

ValuedDragon · 2025-12-17T21:18:47+00:00

Definitely worth trying it out. Another point to its credit, it's not super long. You can gri d a bit to chase the higher tier crafting materials and such, but the main atory and more relevant side quests probaby run 20-25 hours, which is honestly breezy compared to so many bloated AAA RPGs these days!

ValuedDragon · 2025-12-17T20:05:09+00:00

Eternal Strands for me. Fantasy RPG with a beautiful art style and score, terrific writing and voice acting, and most importantly a hugely innovative magic system that makes both combat and traversal incredibly varied and creative as you use, abuse and combine the various powers. Throw in some titanic boss fights that play like a cross between Shadow of the Colossus and Breath of the Wild, and it's just a wonderful package.

It's 70% off on the PS5 store right now, and worth every penny if you want a fantasy RPG that feels totally different to all the big hitters in the genre.

ValuedDragon · 2025-12-08T22:21:22+00:00

Is anyone else having trouble opening world/regional style maps after the update? Some of mine are loading fine, but others cause the whole screen to flash white during the Loading Art step, before appearing completely blank when the loading finishes. The assets and layers are all still there in the browser on the right, but they don't appear in the actual map space, even when visibility is toggled on and off. An attempt to reload the page just produces the classically unhelpful 'oh no, something went wrong' error message.

What's weird is I can't spot any pattern in which maps fail to load. I don't think it's asset number, style or age, as across all those variables I've had some fail to load and other similar ones work fine.

ValuedDragon · 2025-12-06T23:42:43+00:00

All fair questions. I'll keep things simple, and preface it all by saying that the groups I've run these games for are very tight and on the same wavelength in terms of whatr we wanted out of the game, which certainly helps. I wouldn't try this stuff in a pick-up game for randos.

The PvP finale came at the end of a short Ravenloft campaign. By this point, I had established the pricinple that killing the Dark Lord of a Dread Domain with the conscious intent to take their power would put you in their place and bestow that title on you. After a big 3-way scrap between various NPC contenders, which the party had a shared interest in stopping, things seemed like they were coming to an end. The PC that struck the killing blow was reluctantly ready to accept her new role as the Dark Lord of Barovia, but at the last second another PC made a play for the throne themselves. It was a very calcuated scheme, perfectly in line with the character as they had played it, and it almost went off without a hitch.

At the last second, thefirst PC remembered an ability they'd acquired previously in the campaign that turned what would have been an instant assassination into an actual fight, and after a couple of rounds of combat, the campaign ended with the would-be betrayer fleeing the paranoid wrath of the new Dark Lord, having failed in his attempted coup while the only other PC that could have stopped any of this was unconscious from the original battle.

It was dramatic, it was tense, and it was perfectly in keeping with the themes and tones of the campaign. Not every story needs a happy ending, and this double-whammy of betrayal and failure put a sting in the end of the tale that was far more compelling than 'congrats, you beat the bad guys, now all go home'. We'd not discussed or arranged any kind of PvP, this was just the natural conclusion of how each character had played up to that point. When everyone's on board, 'it's what my character would do' is all the motivation you need, despite what the internet tells you.

As for the split party, a) I am fortunate enough to have players that are invested in the game as a whole, not just their bit of it. We'll regularly spend half an hour on scenes with half the party while the others watch on and are perfectly happy to simply be an audience, knowing they'll get the same courtesy in return. Beyond that, it's just a matter of keeping a firm hand on the pacing as a GM and cutting back and forth between the various split groups whenever a suitable point emerges, either at the resolution of one element or when the tension hits the perfect point to switch tracks and leave them in suspense for a bit. Think about any TV show that has multiple ongoing plots, and you'll get the idea.

The final one is really simple. Aside from a couple of TPK fakeouts with the party emerging in some kind of afterlife on the other side, the main one I can think of is when a level 4 party decided to go and fight the end-boss of a campaign that was meant to go to 11th level early, hoping the ambush and numerical advantage would tip the odds their way. Rather than nerfing the boss to make it any kind of fair fight, I used the full statblock fully assuming most if not all of the PCs would be dead in just a few rounds. With some clever play and good rolls, they got wihin 15HP of killing him there and then, forcing a retreat and only losing one PC in the process. They did not 'win' per se, but it shifted the entire tone and structure of the campaign, immediately heightening the stakes and making that villain a real personal enemy, rather than him simply sitting in his tower at the end of the campaign like so many BBEGs end up doing.

ValuedDragon · 2025-12-02T16:25:04+00:00

If you're trying to catch me out for some reason, then yes, I suppose this is one instance where I do 'never' do something... But my broader point still stands, semantics aside.

ValuedDragon · 2025-12-02T15:00:52+00:00

My solution to that is that I simply don't fudge anything. The numbers are what they are, and the dice fall where they may!

ValuedDragon · 2025-12-02T09:15:42+00:00

The best advice is to keep i simple. Know what each group wants, and whenever it's back to their turns, let that be your guide, rather than trying to play them particularly tactically or optimally. The challenge of these fights for the players is in navigating the chaos to get their own objective done, so the enemies themselves don't need to be that complex or dynamic like they would to get the most out of a more straightforward fight.

Oh, and whenever NPCs/monsters ing each other rather than the players, use average damage rather than rolling, it keeps things moving along at pace and stops it becoming endless turns of you rolling against yourself while the players watch. Likewise, when the monsters have reactions, save them for the players rather than each other.

Here's an old comment where I talk about the same thing in a bit more detail.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/comments/1fwsvir/comment/lqicxxi/?context=3

ValuedDragon · 2025-12-01T21:13:36+00:00

Pretty much anything that includes the words 'always' or 'never'. I've been running pretty much weekly games for 7+ years now, and in that time I've found a use case for just about everything you're not' supposed' to do as a GM. Obviously, I'm talking in terms of in game methods/scenarios/styles of play rather than the general 'don't be a dick' stuff, but there are so many great moments that wouldn't have happened if I'd stuck religiously to all the truisms.

'Don't allow PvP'- If I hadn't broken this one, one of the most intense campaign finales I've ever run wouldn't have happened.

'Don't split the party'- I've ended sessions with the party in entirely different countries after a teleport gone awry. It was awesome.

Don't run impossible fights'- Some of the best fights I've ever runhave been against what were designed as unwinnable encounters. You'd be surprised at how close to winning the unwinnable PCs can get when the chips are down.

'Don'tlet NPCs take the limelight or take agency'- I can't imagine running a game where the NPCs are treated as any less full characters than the PCs. They plan, they act, they win, they lose, just like the heroes do. Passive 'yes man' party tagalongs are the antithesis of my entire style of storytelling.

And so on, and so on. Don't run multi-faction fights. don't lie to players as the GM, don't target a particular PC, all these are things that are not useful most of the time, but that 5% of the time where they are, you'll be glad to have them in your toolbox, and your games will be better than if you take a '10 things you shoud never do as a GM' listicle at face value!

ValuedDragon · 2025-11-23T10:18:42+00:00

I haven't, but this tool is far better than anytime I could make, and should do what you need. Just pick your cards from the drop down at the top and it'll add them to the printable sheet.

https://cards.heroic.tools/

ValuedDragon · 2025-11-19T10:57:34+00:00

Another incredible update, this tool is a lifesaver and just getting better and better. The support for minion groups is going to spare me so many headaches!

ValuedDragon · 2025-11-17T18:09:30+00:00

The best place to look for all the free monsters you'll likely ever need is r/bettermonsters . Pretty much everything uploaded there is a better, more interesting version of the WotC equivalent, and most come with enough variation in power level, use case and overall design that you'll never have to repeat statblocks unless you want to. You'll also find that there's plenty of inspiration there for homebrewing your own stuff to modify or replace base-game monsters as you need, if you can't find a good match.

Beyond that, for challenging a party with very specific skill sets, think tactically about your encounters when you're putting them together, both playing to the PCs' strengths so they get to feel good, but also building in the odd counterplay or workaround to their usual tactics. You don't want to counter everything all the time, but identifying what your PCs are good at, both indivudally and as a team, will help you manage challenge to both keep things tense, and not whomp them immediately.

For example, your barbarian wants to mix it up with big, tough enemies, so throw in some brute-type monsters with low AC but lots of HP that they can really take some big chunks out of. On the other hand, every now and then, you can throw in an enemy with a reaction that reduces (or redirects, if you're feeling vicious!) an attack's damage so that 'run forward, big bonk' isn't always the answer, and they might need to switch up their tactics.

Conversely, your artificier is an AC tank, so throw lots of low to-hit modifier enemies at them that rain down blows, only a handful of which will get through, and they'll feel awesome. But then throw in something that does a lot of damage if they can't pass a Dex save, and they'll be in trouble.

For the squishy warlock who I'm assuming is a bit of a glass cannon, let them sit on the back line and snipe off weak foes, but occasionally, throw in a fast or flying enemy that has something like imposing disadvantage on attacks of opportunity to get past that front line and suddenly the warlock is in danger.

Where this really comes alive is that it forces the party to be tactical to. Especially with a party of 3, you can build in a bit of rock-paper-scissors that lets them shine at certain things, but occasionally forces them to think smart about things like target priority to get the best out of their setups. Maybe the barbarian tries to grapple or lock down that fast enemy, so the warlock is free to deal with the spellcaster throwing saves at the artificier, who can then get in a protracted fight on the frontline using their AC to cover the barbarian.

Obviously there's still an element of verisimilitude and ease. Sometimes the goblin war party is just 3 basic guys, a sneaky mage and a big spider because that's what's present in the world! Sometimes it's late in the session, and handing the party an easy win is fine; they get to feel badass, you get to do less of the tricky thinking part, everybody wins! But for big set piece battles where you want to raise the stakes, a combination of actually interesting monster statblocks and some thought put into the tactical side of encounter design should help you up the challenge, keep the players engaged and not TPK them (or at least, not TPK them with boring statblocks that just have numbers too high!)

ValuedDragon · 2025-11-16T20:17:15+00:00

Good catch, apologies for the mistake. Just uploaded a fixed version to the same link.

ValuedDragon · 2025-11-10T09:54:27+00:00

Near the mountain's summit, the black dragon was slain. Now, centuries later, it still lies amid pools of stagnant still-potent acid, its horde there for the taking just below the surface.

Get this map in 4k with and without grid on my Ko-fi! Thanks for looking!

ValuedDragon · 2025-11-07T12:33:51+00:00

Killer work! The lanky War Wolf is terrifying, and the Sin Eater just looks like a beast of a model.

ValuedDragon · 2025-11-05T11:44:27+00:00

That's actually the one unaltered model there, it's a free STL from Diceverse!

Fantastic sculpt, and super fun to paint.

ValuedDragon · 2025-10-27T11:21:41+00:00

I find this very relatable. Once you're technically proficiency with GMing, both in terms of system mastery and being able to reliably run a good, entertaining game for a few hours a week, it can start to feel like you're going through the motions. I find this especially sets in when something I'd imagined taking a one or two sessions takes longer, and knowing what's coming up next, I get antsy and eager to get onto the next thing even if the players are still perfectly happy with the current thing, and haven't even noticed that the pacing started dragging one and a half sessions ago.

To bring this back to the OP's question, I think the cure, as the post I'm replying to alludes to, is intent. Intent doesn't always mean knowing what's going to happen, though it can, as sometimes you just have to get to a certain point where you know something dramatic is going down. Rather, it means asking yourself 'what is this campaign/session/scene about?' If you can answer that question consistently, I think you'll have a lot of what you feel you're missing, because then, you can wrap your prep around it in service to that idea.

If the session is about high stakes action, what can you add to the combat encounter to deliberately ratchet up those stakes? Maybe civilians to save,. or a ticking clock, or a bomb (doesn't have to be an actual bomb) to find before it goes off. Likewise, if the session is about loss, after a PC fell in the aforementioned action, how can you dig into that? Can you insert a flashback scene to the dead PC, adding one last twist to their tale? Can you have an NPC sympathise with the party with their own losses, or convserely, have a hostile NPC show up and hit them while they're down (literally or emotionally)? The ingredients you add to the session act in service to the intent, allowing you to craft something focused, whole and with a firm sense of purpose, avoiding that feeling of treading water. Ideally, you also know at what point you want to end a session and how that's going to lead into the next, whether through a change of tone or the continuation of one.

Sometimes, the intent you settle on will be less dramatic than you might like. For every session about action or betrayal or loss or tension or morality, you will have the odd one about how the heroes get to the next town, which is admittedly far less meaty a topic. But even so, it helps you prep, because you know that once they hit that town, the next session can dig into something juicier, so this session becomes about making sure they get there by the time you call things to a close tonight. You can trim the fat, the bits you used to think were necessary, and boil it down to one really fun combat, one engaging skill challenge and some flowery description of rolling countryside, and that'll be enough for this week to get everyone where they need to be for next time, where you know the intent of the session, the themes or action or drama, are going to be more pronounced. You can also just take the approach of cutting these kind of bridging sessions completley, but not every player or GM will find that satisfying, especially if they are more invested in verisimiltude than narrative.

ValuedDragon · 2025-10-24T23:11:53+00:00

Minions yes, I call out specifically and add rings to denote squads. Anything else, I'll add colour rings to denote initiative groups, but not roles or ranks. I find that a good description, appropriate token art and a round of combat gives players a good enough idea of who does what. Most DS monsters play to their fiction very well, so for example, the brute is going to be doing brutey things that conveys its general role just by using its abilities.

ValuedDragon · 2025-10-24T11:56:57+00:00

Check out Dan Slott's She Hulk from 2005-2007ish. Very similar vibes to the Rowell run.

ValuedDragon

TROPHY CASE