UA: Apocalyptic Subclasses

 Phew, I was getting ready to make a post about Critical Role's 4th Campaign (that will come eventually - exciting news about it) but then WotC came out with a new subclass UA. Apocalyptic Subclasses all have a certain vibe to them, but the clear implication is that, should this see official publication, we've for sure got a Dark Sun book coming in the future.

Dark Sun is a world that takes inspiration from Dune and Mad Max - a blasted, hot, devastated world called Athas ruled over by tyrannical Sorcerer-Kings whose use of magic drains the life force from the world. It's a world of scarcity, where water is more valuable than gold, and metal is hard to come by, forcing people to improvise with natural materials. Psionics are more common here (I believe the Thri-kreen were introduced with this setting).

Anyway, the UA doesn't explicitly name Dark Sun, but certain terminology makes it unmistakeable. All that said, we don't know to what degree the various UAs have truly presaged upcoming books or are just exploratory designs.

The subclasses on offer here are the Circle of Preservation fro Druids, the Gladiator Fighter, the Defiled Sorcery Sorcerer, and the Sorcerer-King Patron. I'll be doing a write-up on each of them in separate posts.

How Minions Work in Draw Steel

 When MCDM released Flee, Mortals!, an alternate 5E monster book, one of the most intriguing ideas in it aside from just having interesting monsters to fight was Minions. Introduced in earlier editions of D&D, Minions are there to solve the problem of letting you build encounters with giant numbers of monsters to fight, but without bogging down combat too badly.

The rules were something of an evolution of what had appeared in 4th Edition D&D. Draw Steel, however, changes the formula a bit more - naturally in part because of how Draw Steel's rules work differently.

Draw Steel's Monsters book has tons of minions - several in each "monster family" at various levels. Minions have group roles like tougher enemies, but they're designed to go down easily and in large numbers.

In Draw Steel, Directors (GMs) are advised to group up the monsters that the party is fighting into various squads, which take their turns together. There are various words to signify how many of a given monster should go into a squad, and roughly how many of each you can throw at a party. A balanced encounter at a standard difficulty will have a single Elite monster for every two players, or a single Platoon monster for each player, or two Horde monsters for each player. Minions are designed to come at a party at a ratio of 8 to 1.

However, that's not the whole story. Minions also act in different ways.

First, a Minion takes its turn as part of a group. When multiple minions in the same squad do something, you roll once and count it for each of them. So, say your Goblin Snipers attack with bows. You just roll a single time for each minion in that squad that is attacking. However, they're also not going to be as effective if they try to focus down a single hero. When more than one minion targets the same creature with a Signature action, the rolled damage is applied only by one of the creatures, and the others joining in that attack only add their free strike damage.

For example:

Andy, Bob, Carla, and Deb are our heroes, delving into the Delian Tomb to rescue the blacksmith's daughter from a group of goblins. A group of 8 Goblin Snipers, along with other goblins who aren't acting on this turn, fires their bows at the party. Carla, the party's Shadow, teleported out of line of effect from all but one of the goblins, and Andy, the party's Fury, just crushed two of the goblins' friends by knocking them into one another. So, of the 8, 4 are going after Andy and 2 are going for Deb's Null while one is shooting at Bob's Troubadour and the only goblin who can actually get a clean shot on Carla is going to take it.

The Director rolls the power roll, and gets a total of 13 - a tier 2 result. At tier 2, these snipers deal 4 damage, and the snipers' Free Strike value is just 1. Thus, Andy gets 7 damage (4 from the primary one that hit him and 1 each from the other three targeting him,) Deb takes 5 (4 from the first that shot her and 1 from the one that's joining in on the attack) and then both Bob and Carla take 4, each only getting hit by one of them. (In other words, minions will be more effective if their damage is spread out).

For maneuvers, like Knockback or Grab, you act similarly, except that there's no additional effect in having multiple minions target the same creature - only one can knock them back or grab them.

Now, what about killing them?

Minions effectively have a shared Stamina pool. Our Snipers each have an individual 3 Stamina. But we track 8 of them as having 24 stamina. Damage to any of the minions is damage to the overall pool. However, when that total is reduced an single minion's worth of stamina, the minion who just got hit dies. If this goes past another threshold, another nearby minion dies as well.

For example, Carla's Shadow uses an ability that deals 5 damage to one of these minions. That's enough to kill it, and perhaps as that minion dies, the knocked arrow they had in hand flies into one of its comrades. It might not be enough to kill the second minion, but it's bad.

The exception here is area effects - if you deal damage within, say, a 3-cube (a 3x3 square on the map) that does 12 damage, it can for sure wipe out the three minions standing within that area, but even though that's in theory 36 damage and thus enough to wipe out the entire squad, the minions outside that area are unaffected - in other words, the maximum damage the shared pool can take is the minions' max HP time the minions in the area. In this case, that means just 9.

Now, admittedly, this requires a bit of narrative inventiveness in certain scenarios. If two minions are next to each other when the Tactician strikes one with a sword, it's not hard to imagine the sword passing through one minion and into the other. When they're thirty feet apart from one another? You'll need to think of a way to justify it. Does the Tactician skewer one goblin with their sword and then fling the body off and into the other one? Or does the the second minion panic and despair in seeing their companion slain and lose their will to live?

The point, of course, of minions is to allow you to send truly enormous waves of enemies at your players. Indeed, I think the balance of Draw Steel's combat leans toward this "we few against a sea of foes" vibe, given that in my rough estimation, most monsters in the book are either minions or of the "horde" category. It'll be rarer cases that one fights platoon or elite monsters, though I'd recommend (inasmuch as I can recommend things in a game I haven't yet played) changing things up by having a variety of encounter set-ups.

Minions could theoretically be encountered on their own - just a giant swarm of bad guys to fight. However, if placed with a captain - literally any non-mount, non-minion creature who speaks the same language - they can get bonuses. The aforementioned Goblin Snipers can get a +5 bonus to the range of their attacks, but these bonuses can be extra damage or an edge of their power rolls. If the captain is slain, another eligible monster can become the squad's new captain at the start of the next round, but this of course puts a target on their back.

Who Is Liadrin Talking to in Midnight's Cinematic?

 So, first off, mark it down: that's twelve WoW cinematics without a Gnome.

(The initial plan for WoW was to only have six playable races in Vanilla, being the Humans, Dwarves, Night Elves, Orcs, Tauren, and Undead. Trolls and Gnomes were added later in production, and that's why they share Durotar and Dun Morogh, respectively, and before Cataclysm, they literally started in the exact same spot at level 1 as the races whose zone they shared. A troll appeared briefly in the Burning Crusade cinematic, but from Wrath onward, the expansion cinematics were focused less on unidentified heroes representing player characters than they were on major NPCs.)

But, more to the point: we see Lor'themar and Liadrin rendered in gorgeous detail in the Midnight cinematic, while Xal'atath leads her void forces in a siege on the Sunwell. While Lor'themar seems skeptical and wishes for Liadrin to remain with him on the front lines of the battle, she ultimately retreats to the Sunwell, where she petitions... someone to come aid them.

The cinematic concludes with the promised aid arriving, and an army of light arriving to clash against the army of the void that Xal'atath leads. But who are they?

One thing I noted while watching the cinematic was the skepticism that Lor'themar seemed to have. Lor'themar is not a religious figure - if he has a class, I think it's Hunter. He's reluctantly taken on a leadership role amongst the Blood Elves after the depravities of Kael'thas Sunstrider (who is on the road to redemption, at least in soul, over in Revendreth,) but in case you don't remember Burning Crusade, the Blood Elves' worship of the Light is actually a pretty recent phenomenon. While their Highborne ancestors certainly aligned with sun imagery as a contrast to their Night Elf brethren, the original Blood Elf Paladins actually acquired their power by draining a Naaru of its essence in a rather profane act of parasitism. Liadrin, the first of these Blood Knights, ultimately repented when Kael'thas returned from Outland with a bunch of fel-corrupted elves and took M'uru to the Sunwell Plateau, where they used the Sunwell to attempt to summon Kil'jaeden to allow the Burning Legion to fully invade.

To back up even farther: the Sunwell was created with a vial of water from the Well of Eternity that Illidan had gathered before the Sundering (another of which created the well on Mount Hyjal from which Nordrassil grew). The High Elves, originally the Highborne of the Night Elves, went into exile rather than give up their use of arcane magic, which the new Night Elf leadership (Malfurion and Tyrande and their regime) felt was to blame for drawing the Legion's attention (which wasn't incorrect, though the distinction between Fel, Arcane, and even Void magic is something I don't think even Blizzard had worked out when BC came out). The High Elves used arcane magic so much that they became addicted to it (not quite to the same level as the Nightborne, who literally didn't have any arable land to grow any food and so sustained themselves entirely via mana, but they were still quite dependent on it - like the Nightborne Withered, the Blood Elves have a population of "Wretched" who lost their minds in arcane magic withdrawal).

The Sunwell kept a steady stream of arcane energy flowing to the High Elves, but with the rise of the Scourge and Arthas' invasion of Quel'thalas, and his use of the Sunwell to resurrect Kel'thuzad as a Lich, the Sunwell was corrupted, and the source of energy was cut off. This is why Illidan provided them with Fel energy, though of course this was like helping someone get over their cocaine addiction by providing them with meth.

However, with the end of the Sunwell Plateau raid, Velen used the remains of M'uru to purify the Sunwell, and transformed it into a source of both Arcane and Holy energy. The Blood Elves thus became light-worshippers, or at least they revered it, and actually the Blood Knights became much more conventional paladins.

This dependence isn't something that game has really done much with in the intervening years (nearly 20,) but it's interesting to see how the Void Elves are former Blood Elves, themselves former High Elves, who are sustained by the Void somehow, though it's not clear how.

Still, as we prepare for a return to Quel'thalas, it's clear that the Sunwell is a major strategic goal of Xal'atath's campaign.

The obvious reason for this is simply that it's a font of immense power. It was enough to summon Kil'jaeden to Azeroth (nearly - we bonked him back down into it, so we didn't actually get to see his legs until Legion) and to make a Lich out of Kel'thuzad (though Liches don't seem to be profoundly rare). More importantly, though, it seems to keep an entire nation of elves neurochemically balanced.

But also, remember that what fixed the Sunwell after Kil'jaeden's first defeat was the heart of a Naaru that had to be slain after it entered its void phase. Is M'uru's heart still in the Sunwell? Doesn't it seem possible that that's what Xal'atath is trying to get there?

We then have another question, though: Lor'themar's concern might be less about philosophical skepticism toward the Light than simply worrying about one of Silvermoon's greatest champions retreating from the battle lines. But the tone, as I heard it, seemed more like he was concerned that she was taking a risk by calling for aid at the Sunwell.

The end of Midnight's cinematic has an army of light-wielding soldiers arriving to battle the Void's forces, but they're back-lit and vague in detail. Mainly, we just see some heavy armor. But they don't look like Naaru or any other light-based creatures we've seen (not that we've seen many of those). What they look like, to be honest, is humans.

Could that mean it's just a representation of us, the heroes of Azeroth?

Or is it a group we're already well aware of?

War Within introduced to us the Empire of Arathor via the Hallowfall Expedition. But there's so much about them that doesn't really add up: we already know the Arathi Highlands, and the history as we've always gotten it in-game is that the Arathi Empire was the original human nation, which spread across most of the subcontinent of Lordaeron. Eventually, it broke up into seven human kingdoms: Lordaeron, Stromgarde, Dalaran, Alterac, Gilneas, Kul Tiras, and far to the south, Stormwind. Lordaeron was supposedly founded by the empire's nobility, while the descendants of the Arathi kings went to create Stormwind. Anduin Lothar, the great hero of Stormwind (and, if we're to take the movie's assumptions as canon, Varian's maternal uncle) was among the last direct descendants of these kings (interesting that he wasn't king, then, and the Wrynn line instead held the throne).

But humanity in Azeroth seemed to kind of be accounted for - with the occasional exception, like the human Wastewander Bandits in southern Kalimdor. And then, all of a sudden, we hear about this whole empire somewhere else in an unexplored part of Azeroth, not to mention that the person we get to know the best among them is also a Lothar.

We know a little about the Arathi: for one thing, they seem to have a lot of mixed-in elvish ancestry, with many having pointed elf ears despite primarily human physiology. Among them, however, there are some who lean more toward a high-elf physiology.

This would actually make a fair amount of sense: the Arathi formed their first alliance with the High Elves to fend off their mutual foes in the Amani Trolls. The Kirin Tor were founded by the 100 humans taught arcane magic by the high elves.

And yet, the history as we mostly receive it is that, despite this alliance, the humans and high elves had a fraught relationship: Kael'thas' people were given all the most dangerous tasks in the Alliance's post-Third-War clean-up of Lordaeron (a project that can only be considered a failure).

What we've seen of the Arathi Empire, at least in this small expedition, is that it seems to be a very religious one. While the Church of the Light is very popular in human lands, its influence on Stormwind society is limited, and it's especially rare in other human societies that we've interacted with (notably, both Worgen and Kul Tirans can't be Paladins - Gilneas does have a church at the center of its capital, but that's about it, and Kul Tirans have their own shamanic faith with its Tidespeakers - one that, in a very Lovecraftian manner, was probably engineered by Azshara, given that it's heavily implied that the Tidemother is none other than the former Highborne queen).

So, yes, in case it wasn't clear, I think that, barring a generic "heroes of Azeroth" that Liadrin is summoning at the Sunwell, I think it's the Arathi.

And I think I know why Lor'themar is skeptical: because I'm calling it here (and basically a year ago): the Arathi Empire is going to be something we have to oppose in the future. I think they're going to decide to bring order to Azeroth by conquering it. And I think that starts with them arriving and saving the day in Quel'thalas.

Liadrin is inclined to assume that light-worshippers can be trusted. But as we've seen reinforced as a recurring theme since at least Legion (though we can also look to the Scarlet Crusade all the way back in Vanilla, which, in fairness, was also being secretly run by a Dreadlord) that the so-called "good" cosmic forces aren't always actually good. From the life-aligned Genesaurs and light-aligned Aarakoa on Draenor to ample evidence in Dragonflight that the Titans can be quite domineering and imperious in their methods, or Xera's attempt to forcibly convert Illidan to the Light, the developing theme in World of Warcraft is that pushing too hard in any one direction is what's harmful. Sure, we tend to see aggression from the forces of Fel, Void, and Death more often, but we also have at least a few examples of benevolent Death entities, like our allies in the Shadowlands, and some examples of the void serving as an important counter-balance to an excess of Light. We haven't really seen any truly positive portrayals of the Fel (the best we get is heroic Demon Hunters and Warlocks,) but maybe we will some time in the future.

I suspect that the Arathi Empire is quite authoritarian. We get those vibes in Hallowfall, but the expeditioners have had to become more flexible and tolerant just to survive there, and with that flexibility comes a friendlier culture and outlook.

I've long theorized that Faerin Lothar's family is none other than the Empire's royal family - she is a Lothar, after all - and that her participation in the expedition to get away from the pressures of her family suggests that perhaps she disagrees with the way that they do things. And if that's the case... well, maybe it's because Emperor Lothar is some kind of tyrant.

This is all a huge amount of speculation based on some silhouettes and a just a reading of Lor'themar's attitude in the Midnight cinematic. But I figure it would be good to get my thoughts down here so we can see if I'm on to something or if this is just utterly and totally off-base.

Midnight Details and Cinematic Revealed

 With both the cinematic and the features trailer, we have some more details about Midnight, the next World of Warcraft expansion and part two of the Worldsoul Saga trilogy.

If you were surprised that we weren't fighting Xal'atath in War Within, it sure looks like she's going to be the central villain in Midnight - will she dodge the Final Boss fate, or is her time finally here? (Also, note the marked absence of Iridikron in all of this.)

But let's talk features!

Zones:

Midnight brings us to Quel'thalas, though it seems that some of it might actually be in separate "continents."

The hub city is Silvermoon, though some areas of said city will remain Horde-exclusive (not sure if this will be separate from the BC-era zones, though I'd hope so).

Eversong Woods is the "Quel'thalas classic" zone, comprised of the existing Eversong as well as the now-healed Ghostlands, and it looks like Quel'danas as well (given how much larger zones tend to be these days, I could see it being the same size as all three old zones combined).

Zul'aman will be another zone, presumably expanded from the old raid/dungeon.

Harandar is an underground jungle at the nexus of the world trees' roots, and is home of the Haranir, who will become a playable allied race.

Voidstorm seems fully separate and is on a distant world, apparently with areas of low gravity, which is cool.

Allied Race: Haranir

Introduced in War Within, these subterranean trolls have a culture based in the protection of the natural world. They can be Warriors, Hunters, Rogues, Priests, Shamans, Mages, Warlocks, Monks, and Druids.

Demon Hunter Spec: Devourer

Demon Hunters are finally getting a third spec, which will be a mid-range DPS (presumably like Devastation/Augmentation Evokers) spec. A void-themed spec comes along with an expansion to allow Void Elves to be demon hunters as well. (I expect a lot of void-themed customization options to be added as well).

Player Housing:

It's coming! We've already gotten a fair amount of details about this, and it looks like there will a fair amount of freedom in how you want to put your place together. Decor can be earned across various content, and neighborhoods allow you to group your housing with other players (such as in a guild) with as many as 50 houses.

PvP:

A new 40 vs 40 battleground called Slayer's Rise is going to be in the Void Storm.

Prey:

There's a new system in which you'll hunt down targets out in the world, but can also be ambushed by them, with three difficulty tiers (and presumably three reward levels).

New Raids, Dungeons, and Delves:

The first raiding tier of Midnight will be broken up into three separate raids: The Voidspire has 6 bosses, the Dreamrift is a single-boss raid, and March on Quel'danas is a 2-boss raid that concludes the story of the expansion's first patch.

Dungeons are Windrunner Spire (I believe in the former Ghostlands,) a revamped Magister's Terrace, Murder Row (a neighborhood in Silvermoon,) Den of Nalorakk (presumably in Zul'Aman,) Maisara Caverns, Blinding Vale, Voidscar Arena, and Nexus-Point Xenas.

Delves are The Shadow Enclave, Collegiate Calamity, Parhelion Plaza, The Darkway, Twilight Crypts, Atal'Aman, The Grudge Pit, The Gulf of Memory, Sunkiller Sanctum, Shadowguard Point, and the first Nemesis Delve, Torment's Rise.

Our companion this expansion will be Valeera Sanguinar, giving Brann a bit of a break.

Transmog Improvements:

Transmog will be gold-free and slot-based (I assume this means that we can change gear and retain the appearance). Additionally, and something I find much more exciting, is that you can set different transmog looks for different situations, like having a set when you're in town versus one when you're out in the world. I foresee having some very nice "casual" looks for when I'm hanging around Silvermoon.

    Altogether, a lot of stuff to be excited about. I'll confess I was hoping if not expecting a full new class, but a third Demon Hunter spec is pretty cool. I'll be curious to see how the stuff we've gotten in War Within gets refined.

A Look at Crafting in Draw Steel

While Draw Steel de-emphasizes the accumulation of wealth as a primary gameplay motivator (you're supposed to be heroes, not mercenaries!) it does still have plenty of cool magic items you can get your hands on.

Referred to as "Treasures," these will typically give you a bit of an edge (perhaps sometimes literally) on top of your class abilities.

Because mundane equipment is handled through the use of things like kits or just implied, all Treasures are magical in nature.

Notably, these treasures are put in the Heroes book, rather than the Monsters book, because the players are intended to know about them. And why is that? Because, except for ultra-rare Artifacts, they're all craftable.

Crafting is one of the many things you can do with downtime projects. These projects can reflect making things like magic items, or doing research, gathering intelligence, training, etc.

Here's how it works:

Some projects have an item prerequisite: say you want to craft a Blade of Quintessence, a weapon imbued with great elemental power. You need, for that, a ruby hardened in the City of Brass (this is a piece of Arabic folklore not original to D&D) as well as a sapphire that has been struck by lightning. There's no explicit source for these items, so the Director will either concoct an adventure to acquire them or can make another downtime project to get it.

Projects also have sources - essentially finding instructions or the like that will guide you through completing it. This could be a book or scroll, or even a master of the craft who can instruct you.

Each project requires a certain number of Project Points to complete. Generally, when you take a Respite (Draw Steel's rest mechanic, which requires at least 24 hours of relaxation and recovery in a place of safety - the Hobbits' time in Rivendell in Lord of the Rings is the oft-cited example) you can make working on that project your respite activity. (As a reminder, there's no explicit penalty to taking multiple respites in a row, though narratively, the villains of the story will be on the move.)

Once you have your item prerequisites and source, you can make project rolls. Each project or treasure has associated characteristics: forging a Blade of Quintessence could involve Might, Intuition, or Reason. The project roll is a Test, but rather than three tiers of results, you simply gain Project Points equal to the total roll. Because there are no tiers, a double edge simply translates to a +4 bonus, and a double bane translates to a -4 penalty. Once you reach the total for the project, the project is complete.

Like landing a crit in combat, if you roll a 19 or 20 on the 2d10, you have a breakthrough, allowing you to make another project roll in the same respite.

The easiest projects to complete are things like consumables, like a few Black Ash Darts, which can be thrown as a ranged free strike as a maneuver and then teleport you. This takes 45 Project Points to complete, and nets you 1d3 darts (or 3 if you're a Shadow).

By contrast, building an Airship (a goal that many of my D&D characters have had) takes 3000 Project Points.

So, how long do these take to actually complete?

If you're working entirely on your own, and doing something that uses one of your class' top characteristics, you'll generate an average of 13 project points per respite at level 1, up to an average of 16 at level 10. That means it'll be a while before you complete even the most basic items, and that Airship is looking very far away indeed.

However, there are some ways to mitigate these costs:

First off, multiple characters can contribute to the same project - if you and two fellow players are working on those darts, you might be able to get a set in just a single respite.

Another potential bonus is a Guide - guides might come in the form of some expert who lends their temporary assistance, or perhaps you've salvaged a largely intact part of the thing you're building, or some manual that solves some major logistical issue for you with a clever workaround. These guides are given out at a Director's discretion, but might account for some large portion of the project's total required points.

Finally, this dovetails with another system: Renown. As you adventure, you'll gradually acquire more Renown as your heroic deeds are tallied. At certain levels of renown, you'll attract various followers - NPCs who basically work for you - flavored as you choose. Artisans and Sages are two kinds of followers you can have, and these NPCs can contribute their own Project Rolls once a day to the things you're working on. They won't necessarily have the same bonuses you have - they tend to have 1s and 0s in their characteristics - but a whole other person working on something will get it finished a lot quicker. Also, because they're staying back at your home base, they could potentially keep working on things while you're out on an adventure. You can ultimately get up to 4 followers, and while you might have a Retainer as one of them to fight alongside you in adventures (that's a whole other system) and perhaps have them specialized in different ways, you could also really focus heavily on production. Say you really want to complete that airship, with its whopping 3000 project point goal. Well, on your own, even with a 5 in the relevant characteristic and a relevant skill, you're only getting an average of 18 per day. That's 167 days of downtime. But if you have three followers working on it, each contributing 12 a day, you could cut that down to 56 days. Through in a guide and that could start to look very realistic.

Draw Steel/D&D Kitbashing: Forced Movement

 There are a lot of really cool ideas in Draw Steel. While there are some elements to the game that I remain a little skeptical about (I need to dig deeper into the kind of out-of-combat stuff you can do) it is, at this point, a game that seems awesome when I imagine running/playing it.

Therein lies the rub, though: there are only so many days in the week. I'm sure that the types of TTRPG tables out there vary greatly, and this may be a common problem or an uncommon one, but here's my issue: My friends have tended to play almost exclusively 5E for the past decade. There's a comfort with that system that is so very familiar after all this time. Furthermore, setting aside any anxieties I have about my own players, I still have so much D&D I want to run. I'd like to run a campaign from the start that uses the 2024 rules (though I'll allow and even recommend using older backgrounds - the only huge issue I have with the 2024 revisions,) as my current one is a bit of a Frankenstein of some players updating and some choosing not to.

Still, Draw Steel is super cool in concept, and I'd love to actually get it on my table (ideally in person, but virtual if needs be) so I can actually see how I like running it (and how my players like playing it).

However: in the meantime, I wanted to take a look at the possibility of stealing ideas from Draw Steel to use in D&D.

And among the coolest things in Draw Steel is how it handles forced movement.

To summarize (I've written about it before, but I'll repeat here): In Draw Steel, there are various abilities that can Push, Pull, or Slide, and each of these can be modified as a Vertical version of it. Each has a number as well, so if you Push 3, you're pushing a creature or object 3 squares away from you (Draw Steel doesn't measure things in feet - squares on a battle map are how any distance or area is measured. You're free to interpret that as 5 feet, of course).

Pushing allows you to move a creature or object away from you. It has to be in a straight line and has to be farther from you each step of that movement. This has to be along the ground (though you could push someone off a cliff, for example.)

Pulling is the same, except that it has to get nearer to you with each step. Again, this only allows horizontal movement.

Slide is the most flexible, and can move in any direction and even change direction mid-movement. Again, horizontal only.

Vertical versions of these can move creatures up and down as well as along the ground. For example, if I vertical push a creature 3, I can send them straight up or at a 45 degree angle from the ground, and if they're up in the air and not, like flying, they'll fall and take fall damage.

Creatures have a statistic called Stability (objects can as well, I think,) which reduces the distance they can be force-moved. A Basalt Stone Giant has an enormous stability of 10, meaning that unless you can move them over 10 squares, they're not budging. But a Radenwight Swiftpaw (a kind of nimble little rat-person) has 0 Stability, and thus will move exactly how far your ability says they will.

Forced movement is great for battlefield control and positioning - shoving a monster away from your ally so they can safely run away from them, or grouping a bunch of monsters up to set them up for a big AoE ability. But forced movement in Draw Steel is also a source of damage itself:

If you slam a creature into another creature (maybe you slide one goblin into another goblin,) both creatures take 1 damage for each square of movement left over. Say I Slide 4 a Goblin Spinecarver into a second one. They started with a single empty square between them, so I slide that goblin 1 square, and then three are left over. The impact does 3 damage.

Now, slamming a creature into a stationary object is even more effective: if I Push 5 a, oh, say a War Dog (a kind of soulless Frankensteined super-soldier) into a wall they were already standing right next to, they take 2 plus the 5 from the squares it couldn't travel.

But wait, there's more:

You can hurl a creature through an object, and there are different amounts of movement that it takes to destroy a square of the object and how much damage it does to the creature. So, this means that you could blast a foe through a plate-glass window, or even a wooden wall, or if you have a huge amount of forced movement, even through a stone or even metal wall.

This is, well, rad as fuck.

Now, Draw Steel is built with this stuff all in mind - tons of characters have lots of forced movement abilities they can use. But D&D also has a fair amount of forced movement as well.

    Putting this in 5E:

Typically, by default, hitting a wall or another creature just stops forced movement. There are special call-outs for creatures like the Kraken dealing damage when they fling you, but no grand unified rule for forced movement causing damage.

In my Ravnica game, we have an Artillerist Artificer, and their Force Ballista mode for their eldritch cannons always automatically moves a target back 5 feet (regardless of size). It's not a ton, but it's something. The thing is, very often, creatures are simply already next to another creature or a wall, so the movement winds up being prevented.

If we were to import some of these ideas, that pushback could actually impose some bonus damage.

The question is how we convert the Draw Steel ideas into 5E.

The easiest thing to convert is distance: one square in Draw Steel is 5 feet in D&D. That's essentially just an uncontroversial fact (though I think there are some people who play it as one square is, like, a meter, or maybe two meters? Don't get me wrong, I think the Metric system is way, way better than what we Americans use, but it's an American game).

The bigger and more difficult thing to figure out is how much damage it should do.

The scaling of damage in Draw Steel is something I'm still kind of figuring out: low level monsters have comparable stamina (maybe skewing lower) to low-level monsters' HP in D&D, but I think high-level monsters tend to have more. This is in large part due to how there's nothing like AC to further increase a monster's effective health: heavy armor in Draw Steel is represented simply by having more Stamina.

Now, Draw Steel's damage scaling works in large part simply by making high-cost abilities more accessible as you get to higher levels (and your power rolls on those abilities becoming more likely to earn the highest value). This does mean that I could imagine that damage via forced movement becomes a smaller proportion of your damage output. That being said, I did see a clip of someone fighting Ajax the Invincible (Draw Steel's Tarrasque, except instead of Godzilla, it's brilliant human military dictator who's an unparalleled tactician) and pushing him 27 squares. I think a treasure (read magic item) was involved.

In D&D, I can't think of any knockback effect that can move a creature 135 feet.

But maybe we don't need to worry about these edge cases so early on.

The simplest thing would be to just carry the rule over more or less as-is. Something like: when a creature is force-moved into another creature, they and the other creature take 1 bludgeoning damage for every 5 feet of forced movement that was prevented. So, if my Force Ballista hits you and you're standing in front of a friend, you take the damage of the attack, and then both take 1 damage for the prevented forced movement.

That's... ok, but that's also a pretty tiny bonus (though this also might seem extra tiny because I'm running a game at level 18).

What about a die roll? Perhaps we make it as low as we can get: a d4. That's still 2.5 times the previous value, but what I like about this is how it can deal more damage on a crit. If I hit someone with a warhammer, which has the Push property, it makes sense that my slamming them into a wall with that hammer does more damage.

(There's an alternate approach you could take here, which feels like would be thematically on point: what if a crit with a push weapon pushes them twice as far, but then the damage of forced movement doesn't double again? Or, hell, both? It would certainly make Push weapons more attractive).

Stability, as a system, I think might be harder to implement in 5E. Draw Steel approaches damage resistance and vulnerability closer to how it worked in 3rd Edition, where creatures have a number associated with a damage type for "immunities" and "weaknesses," where they take that much more damage if they take damage of that type. This does make it easier to put weaknesses on monsters without potentially trivializing them, but it also means scratch damage becomes far more potent.

Point is: Stability feels kind of of a piece with this sort of thing. In D&D, you might have disadvantage on grappling a creature larger than you (or they have advantage on the save against it, because grappling now provokes a saving throw).

Stability might be overkill in D&D, because forced movement is rarer and tends not to get into those crazy levels (there a Talent ability that requires you to get to 9th level, which is the penultimate level, that can Push 15, which is like 75 feet).

But maybe we just bypass the official versions of rules where larger creatures can't be so easily moved, and instead give them stability based on their size? Medium and smaller creatures might have 0 unless they're particularly stout, but then maybe Large creatures have 1, Huge have 2, and Gargantuan have 3? And perhaps certain magical things like Force Ballistae or a Warlock's Repelling Blast might ignore stability (as some Draw Steel abilities can).

I'll need to play around with some of the numbers, and I might then try some of these out as experimental rules in my long-running campaign.

I don't know how well these rules can be adapted to another system, but as one of the things that gets my imagination fired up most in Draw Steel's rules, it's something I'd like to see used in the game I already play.

A Look at the Probabilities of a Power Roll in Draw Steel

 Draw Steel's central die-roll uses 2d10. While this is like the d20 in that the maximum result is a 20, it actually changes up the probabilities quite a lot. Not only does this bump the average up by half a point (an average roll of 11 versus an average of 10.5,) but it also skews things closer to the center.

Draw Steel's rolls also don't have moving targets: from level 1 to level 10, the best result is a total of 17 or higher, and the worst result is an 11 or lower. Classes gets a boost to their primary characteristic(s) automatically at certain levels, starting off with a 2 and ending up with a 5, so you'll genuinely wind up rolling better the higher level you get.

That being said, your average power roll on an ability that uses your main characteristic is still always going to land in the tier 2 territory. At level 1, you have a 2 in that stat, and so your average will be 13, and at level 10, you'll have a 5 in the stat, which will give you an average roll of 16, both in that tier 2 range.

But what about the probabilities of rolling tier 3 results?

The math is somewhat trickier than it is on a d20 - if it used that, you'd just roll a 17 or better 4 out of 20 times, or 20% of the time. Your stat would boost that, as you could get a total result of 17 on a 15 or higher at level 1.

But rolling 2d10 instead creates a bell curve. (EDIT: actually, I think it's more of just a peak.) If we (for the sake of clarity) imagine rolling percentile dice, treating one of our d10s as the tens place, it becomes clear that the total number of possible rolls is 100.

Eleven is the most likely result, because for every number we roll on the die, there's another number on the die that we can roll to get a total of eleven - 1 and 10, 2 and 9, etc. 12 becomes less likely because if we roll a 1 on either die, even with the highest result we can get on the other, a 10, doesn't get us there.

Now, let's say we want to see how likely we are to roll a 17 (again, we're talking about "natural" numbers on the dice here). The lowest either die can roll is a 7. We have the pairs of 7 and 10, 8 and 9, 9 and 8, and 10 and 7. So, 4 out of 100 possibilities, or 4%.

But we're not worried about landing on 17 itself - we're fine if we get 18, 19, or 20. We can get an 18 3% of the time (8 and 10, 9 and 9, 10 and 8,) and then 19 2% of the time (9 and 10, 10 and 9) and finally a 1% chance of rolling 20 (10 and 10).

This appears to be demonstrating a very simple pattern: that the chance of any given number (on its own) is basically 1 to 10%, with pairs on either end of the die's range the least likely on the outside and the more likely as they approach 11. Is that right? (Somewhere a high school math teacher - or even a middle school math teacher - is disappointed without knowing why.)

Let's figure this out:

In theory, 2 and 20 should have a 1% chance, 3 and 19 should have a 2% chance, 4 and 18 should have a 3% chance, 5 and 17 should have a 4% chance, 6 and 16 should have a 5% chance, 7 and 15 should have a 6% chance, 8 and 14 should have a 7% chance, 9 and 13 should have an 8% chance, 10 and 12 should have a 9% chance, and then 11 has a 10% chance of being the result.

(Ok, I realize I screwed up with the calculator, but this logic was right).

Now, our chance of rolling a tier 3 result is thus anything that gets us 17 or higher, so 4+3+2+1%, or 10%. If we have a 2 in that characteristic, though, we only need to roll a total of 15 or higher, so we can actually add the chances of rolling 16 or 15, giving us an additional 5 and 6% chance, so we're now looking at a 21% chance to get our tier 3 result. Twice as likely! (Wow, turns out James Introcaso wasn't lying when he said that that 2-point bonus was a big deal!)

Now, let's consider what happens if we have an Edge. An Edge (which plays a role similar to Advantage in 5E) gives us a +2 bonus to our roll. As we've seen, that +2 can be a huge deal. But how good is our roll going to be if we are making a power roll for one of our abilities (and thus have a +2 to start with as early as level 1) and then also have an Edge? That means a total of +4 (which is also what we'll have without an Edge at level 7). Getting a tier 3 result thus now only requires us to roll a 13 or higher, which is a 36% chance. Still not a guarantee, but a significant statistical boost.

What about a double edge? As a reminder, when you have multiple edges, rather than stacking, they transform into a double edge - you no longer add a number to the result, but just take one higher tier result. (I'll note that this is one mechanic that, while it seems mathematically effective, might take a while to get players to understand instinctively). In other words, our +2 bonus from our Characteristic is still in effect, but rather than making it +4, we're just upgrading our total result.

Effectively, this changes our range dramatically: now, any result of a 12 or higher is a Tier 3 result, and thanks to our stats, we've only need to actually roll a 10 or higher on the dice. Thus, this becomes a 64% chance. In other words, you're more likely than not to get a tier 3 result if you have a double edge on a power roll for one of your abilities, even at level 1.

By level 10, when you have a 5 in your primary characteristics, a double edge using it will require you only to roll a 7 or higher on the dice, meaning an 85% chance that you're going to get that maximum result.

As a point of comparison: in a d20 system like D&D, if you're just trying to hit a DC of 17, you have a 20% chance to do so. Having a +2 bonus to your roll turns this into a 30% chance. If you add another +2 (like from your proficiency bonus,) it goes up to 40%. It's not entirely dissimilar, but Draw Steel's system skews toward the middle, which means that adding a higher characteristic is shifting the window to make a tier 3 result closer to that middle, and pushing tier 1 results farther away from it.