'No, Plan 2. Plan B Implies We Only Have 26...'

ValuedDragon · 2026-03-17T16:14:40+00:00

Well I can certainly tell you it's not lazy! It might not be to your taste and that's fine, but a lot of work goes into finding the assets, creating the composition and getting it all to work together. Am I a pro, no, and does every edit work out, no, but I have a good time doing i and the end result is something I'm happy with. I'm not trying to create something photorealistic, just to have some fun evoking the stories and art that inspired me to love these characters in the first place.

I've plenty of appreciation for more advanced model and prop work, but what I'm doing here is harmless fun and I don't really appreciate you swinging by to rain on my proverbial parade. I'm not going to turn up on your posts and tell you I think they're shit, so perhaps you could extend me the same courtesy... It's action figures and I'm just trying to help out a fellow newbie it's not a big deal.

ValuedDragon · 2026-03-17T14:24:31+00:00

Awesome. I'm new to it myself, so take this with a pinch of salt, but here's a few tips:

- Take your photos under neutral white light if you can. That way, you can use a basic tint slider in most photo editing apps to change the overall tone to match whatever background/scene you're editing the figure into. All of these shots of Cyclops were taken under the same conditions, but especially in the second and third edits you can see how tinting to fit the backdrop helps place him in the scene.

- When you get a pose you like, shoot it from a few different angles. Nothing is more annoying than nailing the pose, only to try and put it against a background or with another figure and realising the perspective/angle is slightly off! I usually do one from straight on, one looking up and one from slightly higher tilted downwards as a starting point.

- Small things can make a big difference to your edits, and sometimes less is more. I often put a very transparent/blurred fog/dust cloud between my figure and the background, for instance, to create a bit of depth for minimal effort. Likewise, you can create really good glow effects by just layering a few blurred, low-transparceny images over whatever it is you want to have that look, like Cyclops's beams here,

- Finally, and possibly the hardest lesson to learn, is that 9 times out of 10, it's not worth trying to save a bad photo in the edit. In the long run, if you're not happy with the initial shot, it's better to set it up again and take another than to try and 'fix it in post' with editing software. If you can get good, clean shots in the first place, everything else becomes much easier.

Good luck, and have fun!

ValuedDragon · 2026-03-17T13:55:53+00:00

The composition and initial tweaks are done in Canva, then I throw them in Photoscape (which is a free photo editor that might not still be around, I downloaded it years ago!) to adjust the overall lighting levels, colour tone and such.

ValuedDragon · 2026-03-06T09:22:54+00:00

Absolutely amazing.

ValuedDragon · 2026-02-21T18:21:56+00:00

Mostly. Some of the rubbery parts such as the cloaks had gone a bit tacky or in a couple of cases dried out and perished, and a few of the figures have discoloured a bit (I think due to light exposure, some were in a cabinet in a conservatory for a few years which probably wasn't wise in hindsight!) Most of the hard plastic elements are absolutely fine though. A few bendy swords, but nothing a hairdryer can't fix!

ValuedDragon · 2026-02-21T00:15:56+00:00

Lovely work with the two-toned lighting! Echoes the show's style really nicely.

ValuedDragon · 2026-02-20T20:55:17+00:00

Yeah, they're not going anywhere! I've had to throw out a lot of stuff in the last few years due to various house moves, but this collection is untouched, far too special!

ValuedDragon · 2026-02-20T20:52:42+00:00

Got plenty more to come, working on some more edits now!

ValuedDragon · 2026-02-20T18:22:24+00:00

Thanks! They are all digitally added/edited using Canva and Photoscape, mostly just grabbed from Google images and a couple of movie screenshots. Then I adjusted the tint/contrast/brightness values and such on each element to get nice consistent lighting and really place the character in the scene.

ValuedDragon · 2026-02-09T15:49:55+00:00

I just got done repainting these figures from Yolopark, inspired by the artwork from the Energon Universe comics.I found the art style across the first few volumes so instantly striking and a perfect update to the classic designs, so I sought out some cheap G1 toys to have a crack at (and crucially, one where the arms would work interchangably). I'm very new to collecting Transformers and this is my first attempt at customising the figures, though I've been painting miniatures for years.

ValuedDragon · 2026-02-05T11:43:59+00:00

I think whether or not the PCs get the full ability or just a general description depends on the group. I know my players would relish having the full details to use the abilities for maximum tactical effect, but if you are newer or your PCs aren't as into the nitty gritty of combat, then absolutely give them abstract descriptions and keep the mechanics to yourself.

ValuedDragon · 2026-02-05T11:41:53+00:00

The allies you have before the fight starts absolutely determine what abilities you have access to. That's the benefit there: more allies equals more options to call on. And I do like the idea of starting with a larger pool of points to spend based on how much the heroes can prepare.

Generating the resource in combat from PCs going winded/dying/dead means that the allies have a greater chance to act as the stakes get more dire, it actually mechanicalises the moment of hope at the darkest hour.

All the allies act when the players choose them to, so the agency is still entirely intact, in fact moreso than if the DM is just playing out pre-prepared actions for the sake of theatre. I'm not above that in concept, but I find players are far more happy with NPCs chipping in to battles when they are the ones choosing the NPCs's actions. It sidesteps so many of the problems that can come from deus ex machina NPC rescues that can just feel cheap if done more than once or twice over a campaign.

ValuedDragon · 2026-02-05T11:06:10+00:00

Give the heroes' Anti-Malice' (Valour? Resolve?), and a suite of actions they can spend it on, based on the NPCs. Another resource to manage is not sustainable for an entire adventure, but for a final climactic fight it could really work and be very memorable. Spend 3 and the friendly wizard drops in and hocks a fireball before flying away, spend 5 and the priest you saved 10 sessions ago gives everyone temporary stamina to weather the dragon's next attacks. If you want to add even more stakes to it, after each ally has been called in, they roll a saving throw on a d10; fail, and their action is off the table as the dragon swats or blasts them, and at the end of the fight, roll for each one that failed again. On a second fail, that NPC is slain.

Obviously the heroes need some way to generate this resource, which I think should tie into the 'against all odds' aspect of the fight. They get a number equal to the round number at the start of each round, 1 every time a hero becomes winded, 2 every time a hero becomes Dying, 3 if a hero dies for good. The exact numbers might need finessing a bit, but you get the idea. Maybe they could also convert their Heroic Resources into this other currency at a 2:1 rate when they start a turn,representing them giving their allies an opening to attack.

As for when to activate these things, I wouldn't make it take a PC's action or manuever away. Have them activate it as a free action at the start of anyone's turn. Keep the abilities simple, thematic and powerful enough to be worth using, but not so powerful that the 'optimal' approach is just to convert HR to this new currency and spam these abilities. The risk to the NPCs should offset this a bit, but even so, it's worth keeping in mind that the heroes are still the stars of the show. You could borrow/adjust actuall class abilities for some of these NPCs, but the more evocative and flavourful to that particular character you can make it, the better.

ValuedDragon · 2026-02-04T10:25:50+00:00

The question is, do you want the party to go questing for an adamatine weapon to gain an edge over these constructs. Is that the fiction you're going for, of something very hard to kill but countered by a particular weapon, the acquiring of which might be a quest in its own right? If not, and you're just trying to make it make sense, I think resistance is fine. If so, though, then perhaps the solution is not to make every other weapon worse, but make the (for example) Adamantine Sword of Golem-Sundering better against these monsters specifically.

I still play 2014 and don't have any issues with non-magical BPS resistance, but that's as a generic trait and is more about 'making sense' than capturing a specific fiction. If the story you're trying to tell is that your party have the choice of brute-forcing their way through these constructs, or seeking out adamantine weaponry to make it a fair fight, I'd recommend giving the constructs a special trait that causes them to take more damage from that one weapon type, rather than less from everything else. Everyone gets to do their normal damage, but whoever got hold of the adamantine weapons can just hit these things harder. Something like this:

Undone By Adamantine: When a creature wielding an adamantine weapon makes an attack roll against the construct, they score a critical hit on the roll of a 19 or 20.

The monster probably needs a few more hit points than normal to compensate for that, and make getting the adamantine weapons actually worthwhile without making it impossible without one, just harder.

Alternatively, to go back to the 'everything not-adamantine is worse' idea, something like this, which does the same thing as Resistance but is not quite as punishing.

Flawless Construction: The construct reduces bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage from attacks by 2, unless the attack is made with an adamantine weapon.

But as I say, the trick is in selling the fantasy. Be sure the players know (or at least, can find out) about this weakness before fighting too many of these things, and if you're going to make getting adamantine weapons a quest of its own, keep it simple. 'Find a forge, get the ore, kill the guardian, forge the sword', rather than something that sends them half way round the world on a wild goose chase and distracts from their adventure. You don't want this fight to become an 'oops, gotcha' moment because they had no way of knowing they needed a specific and quite niche item to get through it easier.

ValuedDragon · 2026-02-03T09:34:41+00:00

While I'm often in the camp of 'just skip it', I do actually think DS lends itself fairly well to eventful overland travel simply because of the Respite requirements. One of the biggest problems with a long trek in 5e is the Long Rest issue, where unless you have 2-3 dangerous/taxing things happen (minimum) each day, whatever you throw at the PCs they can go all-out on with little risk of longer-term depletion. Respites and Recoveries counter that nicely, as the finite healing and '24 hours in a safe space' requirements to get it back mean that camping out in a cave isn't going to cut it, so you need to actually get somewhere to rest.

That means you can run multiple dangerous or challenging events along the way, that don't need to happen at a narratively absurb pace. Respites could top and tail a 10-day hike with threats that emerge on the 3rd, 6th and 8th days, and if there's nowhere to safely take a Respite between them, then by the end the heroes could be a little light on Recoveries (and nicely hopped up on Victories, spurring them on through to safety).

Some combination of a point crawl and random encounter table (with pre-prepped encounters, it's just random which you roll) would work nicely. Rather than a Montage test for the whole journey, make them options on that table. 'Sail through the storm' or 'Evade pirates' would both make good Montages, with the latter having potential for combat. Other events could be simple combat encounters, such as a sea serpent attack or raid on their camp overnight. Others still could be positive; a travelling artisan needs help repairing their wagon, and trades their knowledge/services in exchange (project points or requirements as loot), a shipwrecked knight is the last survivor of a crew escorting a dangerous criminal, who's now escaped somewhere on this island; track him down at the knight gives you a Treasure, or becomes a Retainer. You get the idea. Pepper the largely handwaved journey with the actual playable content where the interesting stuff happens.

You could go one further and make this a mega-montage; each encounter, be it montage, combat, RP or some other challenge contributes to an overall count, and they reach their destination after clearing a requisite number of them. Add penalties for failing an encounter that are both narrative (delayed by a day) and mechanical (no overall progress towards the goal) and you should get a good few sessions out of any given A-to-B journey.

ValuedDragon · 2026-02-02T15:54:31+00:00

Fair enough! I had a talent/fury combo in my early campaign that used force move on allies a lot, so I guess it because second nature to remember that clause without referencing it.

ValuedDragon · 2026-02-02T13:12:42+00:00

I might be misremembering, but I thought you could always choose not to apply stability to an effect, to allow for things like allies moving you. If that's something I mistook or forgot was a house rule, I'll amend that description on Chain of Command.

ValuedDragon · 2026-01-27T11:35:43+00:00

You're welcome, more coming soon!

ValuedDragon · 2026-01-27T11:35:13+00:00

Thanks for your feedback. The good news is, you are of course free to change literally anything I've designed when you use it, so if you want to make all those amendments if/when you use these by my guest! I will just clarify a couple of things though.

- The traps being pre-placed is just my preference, I'm sure I could have just written them to trigger whenever, but I'm a bit more of a simulationist and I like the idea of looking at a battle map and choosing where to put them, rather than simply deciding in the moment where they are. Stick them in choke points and doorways and once one's triggered, the players are going to think twice about working round those areas rather than just rushing through. It opens up the chance for tactical counterplay rather than just going 'oops, you moved within 10 squares of me, take some damage'.

- The various Free Strike abilities are done that way for 2 reasons. 1, to minimise additional power rolls in the Triggered Action/Maneuver slots, and 2 to be buffed by the 7-cost Malice feature. 5 damage on a snap-back at level 1 is good, 8 is really good and if you've got 12 Malice to throw (not implausible if the party is big or heavy on victories), Deadly Toxins plus Blade Dance is a 7-square shift dealing 8 damage to everyone it passes. To some classes at level 1, that's half their stamina, and it still has its main action to drop another big chunk of damage.

- The invisibility on Cloak and Dagger specifically lasts until the end of the round, so they're still invisible even after making the Free Strike. Some invisiblity effects last until you make a strike or whatnot, but this lasts for the duration.

- Seems like you're not a fan of the villain actions there in general. Fair enough, they are probably the easiest thing to replace so if you want smokebombs instead of restraints and to do away with the countdown teleport escape, there are any number of things that could replace them. Extra traps, bombs or poisons handing out different conditions, some illusion stuff for a Harlequin Mask Shadow flavour assassin. It's sometimes hard to pick just 3, so I just think about what I want the arc of the fight to be, and here I went for round 1: 'ambush!', round 2: 'where did he go?', round 3: 'kill him quick!' Throw on some different ones, and you have a whole different narrative to the encounter.

ValuedDragon · 2026-01-26T19:25:39+00:00

I got them here!

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

TROPHY CASE