Not many. The dice they're selling now are leftovers from the kickstarter. Basically, when they did the kickstarter they overproduced the limited stuff somewhat to have spares for customer service purposes, so now they have some left over that they're selling off.Wow, what is with the $200 dice set?I must be missing something here. When I first saw it I assumed it was a box set that included the two main hardcovers plus some dice….
Edit: I dug up and old kick starter video that explains them. I guess they are are special 20 sided d10’s. Which is kind of cool, but you have to wonder how many sets of these are lying on their shelves… that’s some expensive dice!
Draw Steel General Thread [+]
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AdmundfortGeographer
Getting lost in fantasy maps
Both the Summoner class and the Fall of Blackbottom andventure each are out on the MCDM store, right on schedule.
If you had been a Patron supporter you might have gotten redemption codes for the downloads.
If you had been a Patron supporter you might have gotten redemption codes for the downloads.
The default rate is 1 level per 16 Victories (with most encounters, including montages and negotiations, giving 1 victory but particularly hard ones giving 2), but the game completely supports going faster or slower. Doing so might affect the pace of published adventures though.
Jahydin
Hero
Thanks, I think I'll dip my toes by getting the starter adventure and see how it plays since it's only $10 right now.
One other question though, for classes, I see they have the Summoner class being sold for $15 (ouch). Is this the standard model going forward or is there a plan to release them bundled in a physical format?
I'd recommend keeping the normal leveling rate for the starter adventure at least, as changing it might mess with the pacing. The intent is that you'll level once during the adventure and possibly once more once it's done. If you intend to speed the leveling up, you might want to cut out parts of the sandbox bit in the middle.
That's very much up in the air for now. They've been talking about how once the non-adventure supplements have made enough money they might be migrated into the core, at least digitally, but from what I can tell the general mood is roughly "OK, so the core rules were a smashing success. Was that a fluke driven by the Wizards animosity and other temporary things, or can we keep that rolling?"
As for the pricing for the Summoner, it's apparently a pretty chonky class, weighing in at 84(?) pages.
AdmundfortGeographer
Getting lost in fantasy maps
It’s 60 pages. Definitely an advanced class, imo.
It’s mostly filled with the blocks for the catalog of summons for each of the four subclasses, demon summoner, elemental summoner, fey summoner, and undead summoner. Plus stats for enemy summoners.
There is a guide for the Director to convert the summons to monster, so effectively this is a notable monster expansion too (most entirely minions)
The only other class they have talked about coming out soon is the next “Master Class”, the Beastheart. Another master class that will include stats for all of the big “pets” that class will go around with. I could see it also being $15 due to the amount of design and playtest work.
I would be surprised if other future classes that are not in the Master Class category would fetch $15 but I’d be shocked if it were much less tbh.
In recent streams Matt has mused about access to their classes. A couple things.
- He talked about Patreon supporters gaining access to their products early without having to purchase published products. I can confirm that I received download codes for both The Summoner and Fall of Blackbottom.
- Matt discussed they were having conversations on when their work would be “opened” with their license. It’s why Forge Steel exists, for instance, because they released Heroes and Monsters both with the open license. There is a strong chance once MCDM has made back what it cost to produce The Summoner (or each future classes) that they would be opened to the community with their license.
DS! only has 10 levels, unlike 4e's 30. Based on my experience so far and the general guidelines in the book you should expect 3-5 Victories per session of 3-4 hours. Extending that out and if you read the various ways the book suggests awarding victories beyond combat encounters, I can see a half-level per 8 hour session which maps pretty well on to expected progression. But DS! is intended to be a non-fiat leveling system with how Victories accumulate and convert into XP during Respites.
They've also talked about the Operator (mech pilot) and Acolyte (warlock, sort of, though more about embodying traits of their patron than being granted spellcasting power), but my understanding is that these are more at the concepting stage and nowhere near release. I also watched a stream with James Introcaso where he mentioned something about an Archer class, but I believe that was even farther away – more "I'd like to do that some day".
