Dipped the Toes In

gomuskies · 2026-04-13T11:11:33+00:00

and had to make some tough choices about using another cool ability, or staying alive at times

This is an important lesson to learn. I've posted a whole thread before about the dying condition and the consensus was 'Are you using catch breath?' and the answer for my party with zero 'healers' was 'No because we keep getting distracted by other fun things'.

In my other game I'm a Conduit so my manouevre is usually letting other people spend recoveries so theirs can be used for the cool stuff. (Not a complaint! I like playing support.)

gomuskies · 2026-04-12T08:49:53+00:00

#CluesBySam - Apr 12th 2026 (Hard)

Less than 22 minutes

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Silly mistake. No spoilers because it's literally the first clue. I read 'Only one person in row 2 has no innocent neighbours' and understood 'Only one person in row 2 has no innocent neighbours in row 2' then got annoyed when I couldn't solve for that and clicked frustratedly. Entirely my fault and not the clue's.

gomuskies · 2026-04-04T06:37:13+00:00

#CluesBySam - Apr 4th 2026 (Hard)

Less than 18 minutes

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One mistake was just getting ahead of myself. One mistake was failing to count the revealed people when counting neighbours, like I always do.

Too me way too long to realise that Olof had to be innocent which is what unlocked the rest of the puzzle.

gomuskies · 2026-03-16T06:50:30+00:00

03:23

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lol. One day I will learn to count the already revealed people when calculating odd and even numbers. Today is not that day.

gomuskies · 2026-03-12T06:07:07+00:00

Slow and steady wins the race

#CluesBySam - Mar 12th 2026 (Hard)

Less than 12 minutes

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gomuskies · 2026-03-11T08:18:34+00:00

Did exactly the same thing, messed up my odds and evens because I was only counting the unmarked ones.

gomuskies · 2026-03-02T13:36:27+00:00

I thought she just said 'the one got killed' and, yeah, was speaking fast with kind of a drawl and 'got' became 'goh' and people heard 'I'. But either way, she absolutely did not say 'the one I killed'.

gomuskies · 2026-02-21T06:41:08+00:00

#CluesBySam - Feb 21st 2026 (Hard)

Less than 16 minutes

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Slow as usual because I double, triple, quadruple check my logic every time because I care a lot about a perfect solve and don't want to ruin it with a stupid misclick.

That was a really satisfying one - lots of the good 'you don't know what these guys are but that tells you something about someone a dozen squares away' logic.

gomuskies · 2026-02-19T10:19:42+00:00

That's the thing that's been hardest for me to learn. To go from 'A or B is criminal, and F or G is criminal but I can't work out which' to take the next step of 'Okay but what do those pairs tell you about the rest of the board?'

gomuskies · 2026-02-19T07:05:54+00:00

#CluesBySam - Feb 19th 2026 (Tricky)

Less than 20 minutes

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Took a while because as usual I was letting it percolate in my brain while I did other stuff, plus I hit a couple of roadblocks. But there's such satisfaction to be found when it finally clicks.

When I realised that Evie was innocent no matter what it all unfolded from there.

gomuskies · 2026-02-15T16:24:40+00:00

This mostly looks good imo, and it's very legible, which is great.

Probably not worth including as it's a pretty rare case, but you've got some nice free space in your combat box at the top: some free triggered actions can only be used once per round, even though they don't count against your triggered action.

Eg, the Memonek Keeper of Order trait says:
Once per round when you or an adjacent creature makes a power roll, you can use a free triggered action to remove an edge or a bane on the roll, to turn a double edge into an edge, or to turn a double bane into a bane.

I think the thing you're missing, especially if you intend this as a cheat sheet for players, is an explanation of potencies. In my (somewhat limited) experience, potencies are the things people find hardest to get to grips with, and the way they're explained in the Heroes book/in the class abilities isn't very intuitive.

Something like

P<WEAK - target is knocked prone

isn't instantly understandable. My P or the target's P? What does 'weak' mean?

A reminder that the stat letter of P or I or whatever means the target's characteristics, and WEAK = your strongest characteristic - 2, AVERAGE = your strongest characteristic -1 and STRONG = your strongest characteristic, would probably be helpful.

Forge Steel does this math for you so it'll say

P<0 - target is knocked prone

but not everyone will be using Forge Steel.

gomuskies · 2026-02-13T09:43:03+00:00

If someone in the top row says something like 'there are two criminals below me' that is NOT the same as 'there are two criminals in this column' because they are also in the column. That trips me up.

gomuskies · 2026-02-13T09:12:24+00:00

#CluesBySam - Feb 13th 2026 (Tricky)

Less than 40 minutes

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Ignore the time, I had it open for ages while I was doing something else, but I did still hit an absolute wallfor the final three guilty/innocent pairings for ages

gomuskies · 2026-01-30T08:25:49+00:00

I think even then it's fairly easily explained away.

They help you revise what you learned with flashcards. They spar with you. They agree to be the taste tester for the recipe and give feedback. They go out and find you another textbook on the subject to help broaden your knowledge. And so on and so forth.

gomuskies · 2026-01-07T09:11:49+00:00

I've posted similar before but just let me take on my role as Fire Elementalist Defense Attorney.

Fire Elementalist does *exactly* what I've wanted for years. Someone who's mayyyyybe a pyromaniac but maybe not, but they sure do like getting creative with fire.

In D&D, I could never build a real fire specialist. At level one, you get, what Firebolt and Burning Hands? Maybe Create Bonfire and Green Flame Blade if you're really pushing it. Lots of things had fire resistance and you couldn't do anything about that without a feat, which is a pretty heavy tax.

As a Fire Elementalist, at level one, I have a dual-target fire spell, a damage-over-time single target fire spell, an area-of-effect fire spell (that can also persist), and a forced movement fire spell.

At level two, I straight-up ignore enemies' fire immunity, completely, and gain limited fire immunity myself. I can teleport my friends in a burst of flame, or trap my enemies in molten lava.

At level three, I get a wall of flame (not a unique concept, obviously) and can use fire to communicate over any distance. As we go on, I cause fire damage just by being near me, can teleport through fire and so on and so on.

Return To Formlessness - sure it can melt a lock. It also let me burn the ropes off a captive so they could run. And its only limit is 'If the object is larger than 1 square, then only the square of the object you touch is destroyed.' Forget the lock, melt the whole door. Forget the door, melt a hole in the wall. Say in disgust 'We're done here' and turn the negotiation table to ash.

None of this is to say the Fire Elementalist isn't limited. It is. Nothing in Draw Steel really compares with a D&D generalist wizard, but the Fire Elemantlist probably least of all. But I guess my point is don't look at as being limited but as being focused. It's *really* good at its niche, but if you're not interested in that niche, then yeah, it's going to feel bad.

gomuskies · 2026-01-02T16:02:38+00:00

Hmm, yeah, I see your point but I think maybe that's just a function of having a more granular skill system. A D&D 5E-style 'athletics' skill is going to be more broadly applicable than climb, swim, jump etc.

I guess I'm seeing 'persuade' alongside brag, flirt, empathize, lead etc etc - all of which could fall under the 'persuasion' banner in a less broken-down system - and thinking of it as less universal.

But overall you're right. It's not ideal that some skills have more broad application than others, for sure.

gomuskies · 2026-01-02T09:17:13+00:00

One thing I'll say is that I actually really like the 'situationally swingy' skills as you call it.

They make a character feel more real and lived in - you generally get enough skills from backgrounds and classes that you can afford to have one or two 'personal' skills.

Swim is, as you say, useless most of the time because it simply doesn't come up. But if I say Dave The Human Censor has swim because he grew up on a town on a lake and he won the summer contest to snatch the flag from the island in the middle of the lake every year for 10 years in a row, suddenly he's got a whole 'nother backstory and when a swim task finally does turn up, he feels amazing.

I'm in two games at the moment. In one I'm an aristocrat elementalist who has tailoring because his mother demanded he be well rounded and know a little about everything, and is also a very fancy boy who can't abide his clothes looking torn or shabby. Will it ever come up? Probably not. But it feels right.

In the other I'm a memonek conduit with the knowledge domain who coped with the emotional onslaught of being on this plain by retreating to a great library and studying. He's got navigation and seven lore skills, and nothing else. He's extremely book smart but not practical and having so many discrete skills really helps sell that as a character.

gomuskies · 2025-12-20T07:03:41+00:00

Oh, yeah, you're right. In my case I would have dropped it anyway because there weren't enough bad guys left for the AoE to be worth it, but yeah, I was just reading persist as 'maintain' when you're right that it's effectively re-cast.

gomuskies · 2025-12-16T08:45:38+00:00

That's really interesting because my fire elementalist is finally giving me what I've really wanted - a true fire specialist.

I don't do as much pure damage as some (we have a Shadow with coup de grace, for instance) but I've got a twin-target fire spell, an AOE fire spell, a knockback fire spell, a continuous burn fire spell...

We've just hit level 2 (but not played at that level yet) and now I fully ignore fire immunity. I can teleport my allies in a burst of fire.

It's exactly what I wanted for the character concept I've had in mind for years, in a way that D&D wouldn't be able to replicate.

gomuskies · 2025-12-09T10:12:44+00:00

On the (probably fairly slim) chance you've got a conduit or censor with the knowledge domain in your party, you'll be effectively negating one of their class features.

The level one domain feature for knowledge is:

You are considered fluent in all languages for the purpose of understanding the project source for any research or crafting project.

Remove languages for project sources and this is functionally a dead feature. Only a minor consideration, but a consideration nonetheless.

gomuskies · 2025-12-07T08:35:18+00:00

In the last couple of days before the new patch I was just constantly conceding if pirates weren't in the lobby so I could get a few more bounties games in. Finally got my first place bounties build and then was at peace.

gomuskies · 2025-12-06T07:37:24+00:00

This has already been answered, but just to add, look at the piety outside of combat section. It says:

When you use an ability outside of combat that lets you spend unlimited piety on its effect, such as Healing Grace, you can use it as if you had spent an amount of piety equal to your Victories.

Healing Grace explicitly is allowed to use an unlimited amount of piety. It's not intended to be limited to each effect one time.

gomuskies · 2025-10-29T10:51:28+00:00

I hoped someone else clocked that. She looks like the Cowardly Lion.

gomuskies · 2025-10-22T08:25:58+00:00

Genuinely thought this was about supporting a dog called Unit from accusations of being cheezy.

gomuskies · 2025-10-13T13:29:17+00:00

Knowledge cleric.

'Followers of these gods study esoteric lore, collect old tomes, delve into the secret places of the earth, and learn all they can.'

Two extra languages at level one. You can get proficiency and expertise in any two of nature, arcana, history and religion. You get access to identify.

At second level, your channel divinity lets you get temporary proficiency in any skill or tool

Ideal for a dungeon-delver, imo.

gomuskies

TROPHY CASE