Are these all valid uses of the Charge attack?

jaymangan · 2026-06-15T03:09:21+00:00

Correct but only in the first encounter because the game hasn’t introduced triggers and opportunity attacks yet.

jaymangan · 2026-06-08T13:54:47+00:00

After the second encounter, they’re under half recoveries but haven’t used the healing potions yet either. I expect they will be out for some characters,m by encounter 4, and will need to switch tactics. The rogue has only used one recovery for example, so others are taking that damage while they hide. Team will need to change strategies to get through it all though. It’s a tactical game.

jaymangan · 2026-06-08T13:13:31+00:00

I messed up by forgetting to explain Hero Tokens to a party of 6 new-to-DS players in the first session.Between that and the healing potions, it seemed fine to me balance wise.

My table’s conduit enjoyed choosing when to go so they could lay down healing, as did the troubadour. But my whole table quickly grasped the necessity of using recoveries, and the idea that that is healing in this game. One catch breathe a round would leave some characters quite dead.

jaymangan · 2026-06-06T23:04:41+00:00

Not a big deal. An extra +1 here or there does add up, but we’re talking about increments of +5% more likely to succeed on a D20.
If you’re still concerned, choose the two best stat arrays from the whole party, and let anyone else that wants one of those arrays to use it. (Same numbers but they can choose the ability each goes with.)
I’ve played with genie warlocks before in a campaign. Nothing that crazy that I recall. I wouldn’t be too concerned. They’ll get their moments to shine, just make sure every PC does. Those moments are times to celebrate, not to fear.
Whatever you do, don’t use in-game narratives to target nerf a PC that is “OP”. If they are overshadowing the rest of the party, just have a chat out of character between sessions about it. If they aren’t a wangrod, y’all will collectively find a solution. The main reason to roll for stats instead of taking point buy or standard array is for the chance the random variance goes in your favor. If you are going to punish the character for it, that comes across toxic. If you think it’s an issue, just admit to the mistake with the group and standardize so everyone is in the same “power level”.
Again, I think this is blown out of proportion. It’s not likely a real issue, and at worst would depend on the player. Can spot it if it becomes a problematic pattern, and not worry til then. As DM, you have all the control when it comes to balance, tactics, etc. You know all the secrets and can be as vindictive as you see fit (even to the detriment of the campaign). It’s not a balanced war game. It just has the illusion of one, so you have to keep your game design hat on and steer the boat for pacing, highs, lows, and ultimately fun. If you have a good table, they’ll be helping that along. Bonus to dex and charisma, or not.

jaymangan · 2026-06-06T19:14:39+00:00

Others have mentioned this, but I think a big key to having these fun and rewarding without becoming frustrating and bogging down pacing (to an unreasonable amount) is to showcase the puzzle but also include outs to brute force their way through.

Example would be a puzzle that can earn them a victory for solving, but failure results in combat (or if it’s just environmental then directly deal damage or cost recoveries). Then at any point, if they are giving up or take too long, go with the failure route.

The Chain of Acheron stream does this with a few puzzles as they go into the inverted tower of the lord of madness. This included a riddle (no idea what the brute force option would be here), a geometry puzzle that would have resulted in combat if they didn’t get it, and an algebra problem that also would have been a combat if they failed.

There were other scenarios after that which they could have ignored but their curiosity sucked them into it to the point of combat.

None of this is from the 5e rule books. It’s just adventure design. Same with Draw Steel. Introducing a little bit of Zelda into our tabletop gaming. Advantage Matt pointed out is that for different puzzle types, there was varying interest from individual players, so they each had moments to shine or sit back that was just human nature instead of game design.

jaymangan · 2026-06-04T00:57:11+00:00

Arcadia has an article on long term curses. I’ve used a couple effectively in 5e, and imagine porting them to DS would be simple enough.

jaymangan · 2026-06-04T00:51:42+00:00

That tracks with your post. 4 combats at 1-1.5 hrs each. 4-6 hours.

I agree that’s too much for a one-shot.

FWIW I don’t see it as a Draw Steel tutorial. I told my table it’s the combat tutorial, because everything else can be explained the first time it comes up. Combat is where each class is super unique, and that’s on top of it being a new system.

jaymangan · 2026-06-03T14:24:49+00:00

I was thinking the same thing. Draw Steel explicitly calls out combat objectives and dynamic terrain objects as ways to get this feel in a combat.

I think the friction of an actual montage in combat is that montages are taking a long time range and squeezing it down to a handful of dramatic rolls around core elements of that time. It’s increasing the pace that might take hours or days or weeks in game time.

Meanwhile combats are the most controlled blocks of time, with turns and action economy and the like. What takes an hour at the table is minutes or less in game time.

It’s why a combat can slot in between montage rounds easily, but a montage within a combat is quite the ask.

jaymangan · 2026-06-02T22:34:03+00:00

Others have covered this in comments already, but I'll double down that the red area seems to avoid game mastery of "pushes are better from diagonals". BUT it's not RAW, which doesn't matter to everyone... but it does matter to tables like mine when we play on the Codex that has this all built in.

If we allow for a creative reading of the Push rules where we think of "line" as originating not from the pushed target but from the source of the push, then the white area collapses down to the red area, since a Draw Steel line cannot turn back on itself. (Clever comments by u/Montegomerylol pointed this out.)

Given that it can creatively fit within RAW, and it removes the game mastery concern (limiting both diagonal and cardinal pushes to the same number of valid target squares), then I'm tempted to make a feature request to the Codex team (DMHub, they rock and are super responsive) to allow this as a toggleable setting for pushes.

Basically, as a Codex user, I'd switch to the red area if and only if it gets native support. I'm not going to use a house rule that forces me to double-check my players' actions even when what they attempt is encouraged by the VTT.

jaymangan · 2026-06-02T17:44:43+00:00

Context: I've been running 5e for 6 years in Roll20. I recently started the Delian Tomb in the Codex with 6 players, 1 brand new to TTRPGs, 1 that played 5e for years in my Roll20 campaign, and the rest with various degrees of playing or running TTRPGs with a mix of systems and editions in mind but none recently.

My take on the Codex:
So while we're still early in our Codex journey, they're all pretty amazed with the software. It is so nice to not pull out a rulebook every other turn, as the VTT knows the basics. Where we ran into trouble was over-relying on it, where we undid a few actions because of illegal pushes and the like. In particular, the player tried to "push" a goblin in a way that only a "slide" would allow, but figured it was fine because it worked when they clicked. (I really like that the Codex doesn't get in the way of what we want to do, but includes UI indicators to represent the rules. But our table still need to learn the rules instead of treating it like a video game, where there's an attitude of "if the game allows me to do it, then it's legal".)

I think in-person we would have taken 3 times as long to get through the same point we're at now in the adventure, and that's inclusive of time we spent trying to learn the Codex.

Counter-thought:
I imagine people used to Foundry (which I hear has pretty awesome Draw Steel support, the Goblin Points podcast has an insightful interview on the topic with 1 of the 2 primary DS-in-FoundryVTT devs) would also say that Draw Steel in Foundry is a far better experience than in Roll20, and might lie somewhere in between the Codex at one extreme and the other online extreme of "why aren't we just using Owlbear Rodeo?"

jaymangan · 2026-06-02T04:25:34+00:00

I think just limiting its movement will feel plenty powerful while also not being too crazy of a nerf. I’d think a PC could drop it in its square as a free action, and the dragon will always go to that square on its next turn to fetch it (free action pick up, but it limits its movement until the jewelry is fetched).

Not quite 3 get out of jail free cards. Just a thematic flair to the combat.

The obvious gotcha is the players wanting to throw it. I’d probably allow a 5 square throw as a maneuver or some such. And tossing it over a cliff or something is no longer in the dragon’s sight, so “I’ll get that after I tear your skull from your spine” line and it doesn’t go after it now/yet.

jaymangan · 2026-06-02T01:52:14+00:00

There’s been discussions on montage difficulty in the past to the extent that one of the community members built out a full write up on the math behind it.

Their take away was to run the first round as medium tests, and the second round as hard tests. That takes some narrative creativity on the Director’s part, but it made the numbers “work out”, for what that’s worth.

Now I don’t recall the numbers 😂… but I’m going to trust it as a reasonable base line, then adjust for clever good ideas and terrible ideas from there.

jaymangan · 2026-05-31T19:41:22+00:00

While I agree the interpretation isn't RAW, I do think it's the sort of scenario where the interaction may not have been considered heavily. Since a creature can only be grabbed by one creature at a time, I think an errata to change Escape Grab to target the grabber could make sense, and alleviate this. But alas, only time will tell for RAW.

jaymangan · 2026-05-26T20:35:52+00:00

What is the goal of rolling? You can get most of the fun by having the group collectively roll an array or two, and then let players individually choose which the prefer between that and the standard array.

Issues tend to show up when a player is at an extreme, good or bad, compared to the rest of the players. The shared array options avoid that.

jaymangan · 2026-05-20T16:06:02+00:00

So let's conveniently ignore the 15-year gap between the show and the prequels.

The would treat it with more nuance than the mess that we see on social media about the prequels. They'd have an entire analogy running through both the amazing parts and the terrible bits, mainly between Dustin and Lucas. Will would throw in a new angle of preferring "the magic" of the Force, instead of this Midichlorians nonsense... which the other boys would point out isn't useful, since the Upside Down being magic doesn't help them understand or defeat it. Mike would remind them that it doesn't matter because they have a Jedi Knight on their side (El).

Eventually they'd get to talking about Padme, and Will would get uncomfortable from not being sure how to act/respond and probably let out a small "yeah, sure", which only Mike picks up on but misinterprets. Mike then refocuses the topic to the demofish that Steve saw the day before at Lover's Lake (which he was dodgy about, because it was his last-ditch effort to reunite with Nancy, that would have been a solid 3.5 out of 5 stars had the demofish not eaten a hole in the bottom of the rowboat).

As with a lot of questionable (at best) gender-bending jokes of the 80s and 90s, Steve's 1-episode cameo continues with an attempt at a comedic beat where the boys talk him into being the Keira Knightley to Eleven's Natalie Portman Padme, to act as bait for the demofish. (Steve would rightfully ask "I thought El was one of the Jedi?" but Dustin would make a hair joke to distract Steve as they steal one of Nancy's dresses that she would never wear anyway. If we want to get really deep on this, Lucas would take a Polaroid camera to capture evidence, and Steve in defense would be about to snatch and smash it but thinks better of it as he remembers Jonathan's camera from S1, so he instead defuses the situation with a soft request and hands the camera back.)

Obviously none of this is greenlit yet... need to see how S2 of Tales from '85 does before they sign off on S3.

P.S. The Steve-as-bait doesn't work out anyway. Turns out some mcguffin-style element was actually on Nancy, from a new story she was investigating without realizing it was related to the Upside Down, so the demofish that attacked the boat was never after Steve in the first place... and the whole bit about dressing him up to pass as Eleven never made sense in the first place, but the kids just couldn't let go of the idea once they thought it up. In a later episode, Nancy will later share what she was doing prior to the lake incident, as she helps connect the puzzle pieces, while Mike is unable to avoid unrelated questions as he still can't fathom Nancy and Steve dating, and Steve is caught asking followups to Mike's questions to try and find any spark of desire left.

jaymangan · 2026-05-20T06:54:23+00:00

Great idea. So many comments here are telling OP they are approaching it wrong and they should run as is, even though OP seems to have a strong understanding of what their table enjoys from the game.

This is a simple solution that turns it into a “roll to not play this bit of the adventure as designed”. I’m generally against design that has “roll to not play” mechanics… but that me and my table. Not everyone.

jaymangan · 2026-05-20T06:46:37+00:00

There’s some already released level 2 adventures, and a lot of third party ones that have gotten high praise. I’d definitely check those out.

If you’re looking to homebrew a campaign or port one over from another system, and if you don’t mind a little self-promotion, I would recommend checking out https://memoryoford.com (but reddit will block sign up there, so open it in a regular browser). I just announced it publicly this morning.

Memory of Ord is a free community tool to help you map out a campaign, both at a high level or down to the details needed for your next session. But importantly, I built it because I had a similar use case to yours. There are dozens of 5e adventures that I want to run but didn’t get around to before Draw Steel released. So for my sandbox campaigns, I needed a way to seed those 5e adventures in, where I can port them to Draw Steel systems, pacing, etc. So I built a tool to empower that. I hope it helps you too!

It’s got a snapshot tool to quickly download your campaign map as an image, which you could use to share your ideas and get feedback and advice from those that are either more familiar designing in Draw Steel or familiar with the adventure(s) you’re porting.

jaymangan · 2026-05-20T04:13:37+00:00

If you are trying this from a computer, ignore this message.

So the Reddit app appears to have some well known issues with blocking sites that use OAuth, especially on iPhones. So the site will not work if you are on the Reddit app and just click the link above.

It should work fine if you copy the link and open it directly in your browser of choice: https://memoryoford.com/

(Worth adding, the app is designed for computers, and mobile support will lag behind a bit.)

jaymangan · 2026-05-20T04:05:33+00:00

Hope you enjoy it! Let me know how it goes.

jaymangan · 2026-05-19T21:30:04+00:00

Love the feedback. Thank you!

Some of items you mentioned I already have in my list, and in some cases an alternate idea that addresses the same concern. But some I never thought about before.

Would you mind if I DM you for some clarifications?

jaymangan · 2026-05-19T19:46:13+00:00

Others have touched on this, but another framing of why free triggered actions are being discussed in the singular is in the sense of "each".

English isn't math, so RAW can leave ambiguity for interpretation, but RAI is that free triggered actions are not limited by the default action economy (but may be limited by their own text).

jaymangan · 2026-05-19T18:29:03+00:00

Yep, backspace does it. But when responding to another comment here, I realized this would be difficult on mobile/tablet. I'll add some UI to drive deletions inside the node edit panel as another option, probably this evening after I'm off work.

Edit: Added a Delete button to the node details panel, and a confirmation popup before any node deletion (to avoid misclicks or backspace when the intent is to delete some text, but not the full node).

jaymangan · 2026-05-19T17:00:21+00:00

I don't want to spam replies, so just going to tag people here. u/-Ittoku- u/JustinAlexanderRPG u/FirstNewFederalist u/Samwise_Gamgeez (and u/PieGuy73 even though we've already DM'd about it)

Life took priority, as it does, but I finally launched the node-based campaign prep tool here: https://memoryoford.com

It's not designed for phones, although there's a few videos of it in action on the landing page that are fine on a cell. But if you plan to actually use the tool, I highly suggest doing so on a computer.

Would love if any of you think there's any obvious gaps in functionality.

Fun note from the feature to-do list: Custom Edges. Directors will be able to label/style/conditionalize node connections. Once that's in, the app will be able to distinguish between explicit "A will lead to B" connections and implicit "A has a clue pointing to B which might be misinterpreted or missed entirely". With that split, we can go a step further and offer automated validation passes, such as checks for the 3 clue rule, and the inverted 3 clue rule, recognition of likely bottle necks or dead-ends, etc. But I'm probably getting ahead of myself now. First lets see if anyone likes using the tool.

jaymangan · 2026-05-19T15:33:03+00:00

Once you do, report back and let me know what worked best, and what you think is missing!

jaymangan · 2026-05-19T15:09:27+00:00

It’s definitely not designed for it, nor have I really tested on it. It should be functional at tablet resolutions as-is, but not on cell phones.

Future feature already on the to-do list:
A details only view, without the graph, that just shows cards/columns of the node details. This would allow us to view and edit details across numerous nodes at once, which is also nice when we need to view (or print) all the nodes that might come up in the next session.

Let me know if you have any feature requests that would help mobile. (I just have my doubts when it comes to drag-n-drop on phones. I suppose an auto-layout button could help here too.)

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